As Sri Lanka ‘successfully’ ended its war with the LTTE and India is still fighting ‘insurgents’ in Jammu and Kashmir and the northeast states, India will share more experience with the SL military particularly in tackling ‘insurgency’ and will give more training to SL military in building capacity, particularly in adventure sports and English language, media reports from India said on the first ‘Army-to-Army’ talks between the two militaries that took place from Wednesday to Friday. Both sides have agreed to send their instructors to each other’s military academies. India has allotted more seats for training SL military personnel in its military academies. As Sinhala and Tamil politics are hostile, economic and military integration are the ways for political integration of the entire island with India, is the line of thinking in New Delhi, political observers said.
In the talks that took place in New Delhi, the five-member delegation of Sri Lanka’s genocidal Army was headed by its Military Secretary, Major General H.C.P. Goonetilleke and the Indian military side was led by its Additional Director General for International Cooperation, Major General I.P. Singh.
The SL military currently occupying the country of Eezham Tamils is in full swing in militarising the territory, terrorising the population, carrying out demographic changes and committing structural genocide. Extermination of the historical nation of Eezham Tamils in the island is the agenda.
Besides, under the Rajapaksa regime, the SL military also imperceptibly militarises the entire island, paving way for a camouflaged military dictatorship.
The powers that called Sri Lanka a ‘democratically elected government’ to abet its genocidal war now openly or secretly recognize the militarized regime and compete in influencing the military for their strategic benefits.
Media reports from Colombo say that the former SL Army Commander Sarath Fonseka, who led the Army’s genocidal war, was later arrested by Mr. Rajapaksa on the advice of Indian intelligence that Fonseka would use his popularity to stage a military coup. Media reports also imply that Fonseka had the backing of the US.
The ‘Army-to-Army’ talk India initiates now with Sri Lanka – a special relations India has with only 9 other countries – is in this context a recognition to the importance of military in the island or indirect recognition of the military rule in the island, political observers say.
Diplomats in Colombo say that India will object to any international solution to the national crisis in the island.
Indian diplomacy was always a failure in the case of the island.
As a result, the public politics both among the Sinhalese and Eezham Tamils are hostile to New Delhi. Any solution India could think of is less likely to make one or both of them reconcile with India.
Therefore the line of thinking in New Delhi is not political, but rather economic and military.
Economic integration and military integration would eventually bring in political integration of the entire island with India and the national question would be buried under that, is the thinking.
To execute the thinking New Delhi is now adopting an Army that has been internationally exposed of its genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Assembly in Tamil Nadu has resolved to investigate the war crimes committed with the intention of genocide.
In this respect the New Delhi thinkers go against the polity of their own people. People of India have to decide how good it is for them in the long run to allow military line of thinking to overtake politics.
Both the Indian and Sri Lankan militaries have committed serious war crimes against the Eezham Tamils in the war on the national question in the island.
The term Sri Lanka Army is a misnomer. If any one thinks that Sri Lanka means the entire island, then the Army that exists there is not a Sri Lanka Army but a Sinhala Army.
Both the Indian Army and the Sinhala Army are now talking over the military vacuum of Tamils.
All their cordiality, sharing experience and capacity building take place over this vacuum and that don’t signal any solution to the genocide and national question of Eezham Tamils.
Is there a message New Delhi conveys to Tamils in general?
An Indian intelligence-sent spokesperson said in London sometimes back to count India out in Eezham Tamils seeking their independence.
To what extent politics could compensate the military vacuum in facing a power that got its independence through Gandhian movement is a challenge left to the Eezham Tamils and Tamils in general.